There’s very good reason for such concern as Mark Driscoll and his Acts 29 Network are growing in popularity and influence within the younger sector of the Reformed Camp; being blessed as they are by Dr. John Piper, who’s seen as a father of this New Calvinism. Now let’s consider that Darren Patrick is Vice President of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network as well as lead pastor of The Journey. Emerging Church luminary Andrew Jones, who blogs as Tall Skinny Kiwi, tells us that a couple of years ago:

And part of this “neo-reformed” New Calvinism involves their recommendation of the book Celebration of Discipline (CoD) by the aforementioned sinfully ecumenical Quaker mystic Richard Foster, the leading purveyor of spurious CSM; as I said before, along with Dallas Willard, who believes, teaches, and confesses the exact same skubalon as Foster. Willard’s role is to give this Roman Catholic Counter Reformation mysticism a kind of scholastic veneer; and as a result, people often don’t even realize that what Foster teaches, Willard himself does as well regarding this spurious spirituality.

The truth is that the very rotten core practice of this CSM is Contemplative/Centering Prayer, which is sometimes referred to as practicing “silence and solitude” or by the ridiculous moniker “wordless prayer”; but it’s actually a type of meditation in an altered state of consciousness that’s virtually identical to that practiced in Eastern religions such as Zen Buddhism and the transcendental meditation of Hinduism. And yet this kind of spurious spiritual formation—so-called “Christian” mysticism, which really developed in the antibiblical monastic traditions of apostate Roman Catholicism, is now showing up in more and more evangelical churches.

Yes, Mark Driscoll has distanced himself from the more progressive liberals in the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church, with which he once closely worked while the Emerging Church was spawned; such as the unholy EC trinity of apostates, Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren, universalist Emerging Church pastor Doug Pagitt, and his friend Tony Jones, the progressive “theologian in residence” at Solomon’s Porch. However, it’s becoming clear that he hasn’t moved away from Counter Reformation spirituality of key mentors of the Emerging Church such as Richard Foster and Dallas Willard.[2] Their teaching is precisely the opposite of the Reformation theology Mark Driscoll professes.